The present invention relates generally to the area of information processing and, more particularly, apparatus and methods for managing and scheduling time-based information across multiple time zones.
Successful management of one""s time is a goal that every successful professional must achieve. One""s business day may be swept away in a deluge of meetings and appointments, all of which must be somehow managed. An attempt to manage this task on paper, such as with a simple wall calendar, is unworkable for all but the simplest of schedules. More likely, such unsophisticated aids to managing one""s time will lead to scheduling conflicts, missed appointments, botched deadlines, and angry clients.
The process of time management has been particularly difficult hen scheduling and tracking appointments and the like across different time zones. When a business person travels, for instance, he or she must maintain (or adjust) his or her calendar for multiple time zones. Similarly, when scheduling a conference with participants from different time zones, one is required to constantly remain mindful of the particular time zone difference of each of the participants. Moreover, the individual responsible for scheduling the conference does not just juggle a particular time in a given time zone for each participant; instead, he or she must juggle a range of times when each participant is available, thus further complicating the task.
Meeting the actual needs of particular market segments increases the difficulty of the task. A secretary, for instance, might be required to set up a conference call between Tokyo, San Francisco, Washington, and Paris. Here, not only are time zones being crossed but, also, a date zone is being crossed. The secretary might, for instance, attempt to set up the conference for Friday in Washington, only to find that no one is available from Tokyo during the conference as the Tokyo office is closedxe2x80x94it is Saturday.
Traveling professionals also face a similar problem. A business person may have events scheduled in his or her xe2x80x9clocalxe2x80x9d time, such as appointments and recurring events (e.g., weekly staff meetings). Despite the fact that this individual travels to various time zones, the appointments must somehow be managed in a way which is meaningful to him or her. Suppose the business person had a weekly staff meeting at 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, every Wednesday. When the business person travels to Sydney, Australia, that staff meeting is no longer at xe2x80x9c10:00 AM.xe2x80x9d At the same time, however, the business person often will have set up one or more meetings while in Sydney, for instance a 9:00 AM meeting on Wednesday. Here, the business person needs to track the local appointment set up in local timexe2x80x94the meeting in Sydney at 9:00 AM Wednesday, Sydney time. Yet, he or she must also coordinate and manage these local appointments (i.e., appointments in local time) with other events and appointments which have been scheduled in time zones different from the one in which the business person is currently staying.
What is needed are system and methods which allow a user, particularly those which travel, to maintain a calendar of appointments and events where the individual appointments and events themselves must be scheduled across various time zones (and even date zones). Specifically, such a system should provide a scheduling calendar capable of tracking of events, such as appointments, conference, and the like, across multiple time zones. In this fashion, users who travel and users who schedule conferences with participants from different time zones can easily determine appropriate times in various locales for scheduling events appropriately.
The present invention recognizes a user needs flexibility in choosing how appointments, events, and other time-based data are entered and managed, despite the fact that such data spans multiple time zones. According to the present invention, therefore, an electronic Personal Information Manager (PIM) including a calendar/scheduling system is provided with an EarthTime(trademark) module of the present invention. The module provides an interface and methods allowing users to set up multiple calendars, in different time zones, as they travel, as well as set up conferences (e.g., phone conferences, Internet chat sessions, and the like) across various time zones.
In operation, the system of the present invention tracks different types of times. Usually, two types of times are important to the user: xe2x80x9chomexe2x80x9d time and xe2x80x9clocalxe2x80x9d time. Home time is the time zone of where the user typically spends most of his or her time; this is usually the time zone for the user""s home office. Local time is the time for the locality where the user is located physically at any particular instance in time. In addition to home time and local time, the present invention introduces a third type of time: xe2x80x9cremotexe2x80x9d time. Specifically, the time zones of the other individuals (i.e., other than the user) are treated as remote time. The system may show events and appointments in the user""s own xe2x80x9clocalxe2x80x9d time (or other user-selected type of time), regardless of where the user presently is. Using these three types of time (i.e., xe2x80x9clocalxe2x80x9d time, xe2x80x9chomexe2x80x9d time, and xe2x80x9cremotexe2x80x9d time), the system of the present invention provides improved interface and methods for scheduling and managing activities, such a phone conference, across multiple time zones.